5 Top Cloud Computing Companies

The cloud computing market is an incredibly dynamic, often confusing, space.

Although millions of companies and individual consumers rely on the cloud, most have an ill-defined understanding of what this technology actually is.

Cloud computing can be categorized as: Software as a Service (SaaS): applications that are used in the cloud environment (e-mail and communication features); Platform as a Service (PaaS): platform that such applications are running on (databases and web servers); and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): infrastructure supporting the platforms (servers, storage, and virtual machines).

According to a report from Gartner, worldwide public cloud revenue is set to grow 17.3 percent in 2019 with IaaS continuing to be the fastest growing segment with a rate of 27.6 percent.

Further, Gartner projects the overall revenues to be US$206.2 billion in 2019, up from US$175.8 billion in 2018 while the IaaS segment is set to rake in US$39.5 billion, up from US$31 billion in 2018.

“Demand for integrated IaaS and PaaS offerings is driving the next wave of cloud infrastructure adoption,” Sid Nag, research director at Gartner, said in the release.

It has to be noted that the companies operating in each of these spaces are quite varied. While the SaaS market is saturated with public and private companies––many in the mid- to small-cap range––the IaaS market is absolutely dominated by the large cap companies who have the funds, technology and infrastructure to support this service.

With that in mind, here the Investing News Network (INN) is profiling the top five IaaS companies in terms of market share as listed by Gartner. 

1. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)

With a market share of 51.8 percent at the end of 2017, and with an estimated revenue of US$12.2 billion in 2017, Amazon’s Amazon Web Services is the undisputed leader of the IaaS segment.

While the company’s market share has dipped slightly from its 2016 levels, Amazon’s revenue has increased by 25 percent over the last two yers.

Amazon has been operating the web services for over 12 years. As of September 2018, the company operates in 18 geographic regions and offers 125 fully featured services including computing, storage, databases networking and analytics. Further, the company’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) ,which provides the scalable computing capacity and thereby eliminating the need of investing in hardware, is present in 55 Availability Zones (AZs).

2. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Second on the list with a market share of 13.3 percent is Microsoft which witnessed a 98 percent growth in this segment from the 2016 levels. The company’s revenues in 2017 was US$3.1 billion, up from US$1.5 billion in 2016.

The company, which offers the IaaS services through Azure, is present in 140 countries. Meanwhile, the number of Azure regions stands at 54 as of September 2018. Like Amazon Web Services, Azure offers more than 100 services and the company claims to have 120,000 new subscriptions per month.

3. Alibaba (NYSE:BABA)

With 4.6 percent market share and with a revenue of US$1 billion in this vertical in 2017, Alibaba comes in third with a 62.7 percent increase from its 2016 revenue of US$670 million.

The company offers services through its Alibaba Cloud platform, which has over 40 products and is present in 70 countries with 49 Availability Zones. The company claims to have more than one million paying customers.

4. Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Google makes it to the list with a market share of 3.3 percent and a 2017 revenue of US$780 million in this vertical. The company had a 56 percent growth from its 2016 revenue of US$500 million.

The company offers services through Google Cloud Platform and is present in over 17 regions, 35 countries and 52 Zones. The company offers over 4A 0 products but much of it varies across region and countries.

5. IBM (NYSE:IBM)

The company with a market share of 1.9 percent and a revenue of 457 million in 2017 is IBM. With a growth of over 53 percent from the 2016 levels, IBM takes the final spot on the list.

The company offers services through IBM Cloud which has over 15 products and is available in 19 countries and has 18 availability zones.

This is an updated version of an article originally published by the Investing News Network in 2016.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Bala Yogesh, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.